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It was in the spring of 1971 when Ken Dryden jumped into the Canadiens lineup late in what had been a trying season in Montreal and played his first NHL game, then five more to close out the season.

What could it hurt? Claude Ruel had stepped down as coach in December in favour of Al MacNeil and a big trade with Detroit had brought Frank Mahovlich to the Habs, but still they sat well behind the division-leading Bruins and second-place Rangers after missing the playoffs the season before. Not much was expected.

So MacNeil went with his gut and made Dryden, out of Cornell at a time when U.S. college players rarely made the NHL, the playoff starter ahead of Rogie Vachon and Phil Myre, and Dryden made history, taking the Canadiens all the way to another Stanley Cup triumph.

Ever since, the Dryden story has served as the standard for the way in which a goaltender arriving late or partway through a season can impact his team.

Every few seasons, we get a Dryden-like story, or something that appears to be something like it. Nine years ago, Dwayne Roloson joined the Edmonton Oilers from the Minnesota Wild in mid-season and carried the Oilers all the way to the Stanley Cup final before being hurt. Edmonton lost the championship series to Carolina.

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Oddly enough, this season we have three stories of this type, all different in their own way, and all of which have electrified the fan bases in their respective cities.

Devan Dubnyk has done the reverse loop to Roloson, going to Minnesota from Edmonton, with brief stops in Nashville, Montreal and Phoenix in between. With the Wild in absolutely desperate straits between the pipes and outside the playoff picture, GM Chuck Fletcher sent a third-round pick to the Coyotes on Jan. 14 for the 28-year-old Dubnyk, who arrived with little fanfare, but some hope he could simply be a little better than Niklas Backstrom or Darcy Kuemper.

Instead, the 6-foot-6 Dubnyk has been brilliant with a superb .935 save percentage and a 21-6-1 record, putting the Wild into a playoff position and setting himself up for a nice pay day this summer as an unrestricted free agent.

In New York, meanwhile, 27-year-old backup goalie Cam Talbot was handed a rather different chore when star Henrik Lundqvist went down with a damaged blood vessel in his neck on Jan. 31. The defending Eastern Conference champs were left with only Talbot and rookie MacKenzie Skapski at a time when they were 10 points behind the overall league leaders and trailing the New York Islanders in the division.

Instead of looking around for veteran help like the Wild had done with Dubnyk, the Rangers handed the job to Talbot, and he thrived. Since Feb. 4, he has a 13-3-3 record and the Blueshirts have both pulled ahead of the Islanders and into a fight for the Presidents Trophy.

Not bad for a netminder out of Caledonia, Ont. whose only offer as a youngster was a spot on the University of Alabama-Huntsville roster. How much he’ll play now that Lundqvist appears ready to return competition soon, however, remains an open question.

Which brings us to Andrew Hammond, even less accomplished in some ways than Dubnyk and Talbot when, at the age of 27, he was handed the starting job for the Ottawa Senators mostly because he was the only healthy body left to turn to.

Ottawa’s season had been more like Minnesota’s than New York’s, a mostly mediocre campaign in which the most intriguing story had been the possible move of the team to a downtown arena. But then Hammond — The Hamburglar — arrived, and suddenly the Sens had a hero again.

The numbers are one thing — 12-0-1, with a ridiculous .950 save percentage. But beyond the stats and the free burgers, Hammond has re-energized the team and given the fans in Ottawa someone new to cheer for after the departure of long-time stars Daniel Alfredsson and Jason Spezza in recent years.

Once traded from one B.C. Tier Two team to another for $2,500, Hammond seems an unusual hero in many ways, not the least of which was his record at Bowling Green, where he won 30 of 111 games over his career there. In his first year, he went 0-12-2.

Nonetheless, the Sens are now within two points of a playoff position with Hammond between the pipes, and on Thursday when he allowed more than two goals in an NHL game for the first time after tying a 77-year-old NHL goaltending record, his teammates picked him up with six goals to defeat Boston, the team Ottawa is trying to catch.

All three of these goalkeeping stories — Dubnyk, Talbot and Hammond — are as intriguing as they are unlikely. Some might argue they show that the difference between average goalies and good ones these days is actually rather small, or that teams shouldn’t use high draft picks on netminders since the ones available off the scrap heap are often just as good.

Dryden’s brilliance in the spring of ’71 turned into a Hall of Fame career. More often, these kind of goalie heroics are more short-term. Even this season in Winnipeg, former ECHLer Michael Hutchinson seemed to have come out of nowhere to become the team’s starter, but veteran Ondrej Pavelec has reasserted himself of late.

How far the stories of Dubnyk, Talbot or Hammond stretch is hard to gauge. Only the Rangers look like a Cup contender, and that’s with Lundqvist back and healthy. All three, meanwhile, could end up playing elsewhere next season, with Hammond a free agent like Dubnyk and Talbot possibly trade bait.

None are likely join Dryden in the Hall one day. But just by doing what they’ve done, they’ve put themselves in the same compelling paragraph in hockey history.

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